


warning signs can feel like they're butterflies (i won't stop 'till i get where you are)

by highfunctioningsociopath (RUNNFROMTHEAK)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Adultery, Also! Timeline is basically there is a bigger gap between TAB and T6T, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Breaking Up & Making Up, Cheating, Childhood Trauma, Drug Abuse, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt Sherlock Holmes, Infidelity, John is a Bit Not Good, M/M, Mary Morstan is like a hard neutral here in terms of things, Mental Health Issues, Mildly Dubious Consent, Muteness, No Beta We Die Like Sherlock Keeps Trying To, POV Sherlock Holmes, Pining Sherlock Holmes, Post-Episode: The Abominable Bride, Post-Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, Post-Season/Series 03, Post-Season/Series 04, References to Depression, Season/Series 04, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Holmes Has Issues, Sherlock Holmes Has Low Self-Esteem, Sherlock Holmes is a Bit Not Good, Sherlock is a Mess, Sherlock-centric, Suicide Attempt, TJLC | The Johnlock Conspiracy, Time Skips, Unhealthy Relationships, any one - Freeform, but gayer, it's all the canon goodness, jesus dude someone needs a single self-preservation instinct, just one, she was a mercenary sooooo, she's not good or bad really and her morality is pretty skewed but y'know, warning, you might even say...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:27:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29666577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RUNNFROMTHEAK/pseuds/highfunctioningsociopath
Summary: The human heart can last up to four hours on ice outside of the body. The human body can survive up to four minutes without a pulse before brain cells begin to die, starved of all necessary nutrients and air.Sherlock finds it hideously ironic that the part outlasts the whole.John Watson lives, after all, while Sherlock waits for the emotional equivalent of four minutes to pass.(He wonders if love is meant to hurt this much)
Relationships: Mary Morstan/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes & Mary Morstan, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 26
Kudos: 75





	warning signs can feel like they're butterflies (i won't stop 'till i get where you are)

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhhh! I loved writing this and I hope you enjoy reading it! Songs to go with it are Graveyard by Halsey, Moonstone by Jaymes Young, Small Doses by Bebe Rexha, and Driver's License by Olivia Rodrigo.
> 
> I just had a lot of feelings and needed to write them out lol <3

He shoots her blackmailer on Christmas Day on the front porch of a cold mansion.

It’s a good shot – clean, precise – with an entry wound and an exit wound. Bits of brain matter coated in blood spatter at Magnussen's back, a dead-eyed look of shock in his empty eyes. He falls backwards –

( _Forwards or backwards? We need to decide which way you’re going to fall._

 _One hole or two?_ )

—his hands raised defensively. Too little too late, the shark had bled in the water and another swam in to eat him up. High-functioning sociopath indeed. Not a hero at all, John. Understand that. The Sig slips out of his hand and clangs against the concrete, and he pretends the sound of a dropped gun is unfamiliar,

Hands raised, an order for John – dear, loyal, John – and a despondent Mycroft. His insipid brother, so fallen by sentimental nonsense found in blood connections. So caring, so _fraternal_ and endlessly concerned. Shouldn’t he know better? Shouldn’t he have cut Sherlock off by now?

Junkies disappoint everyone eventually, after all. A weakness, a liability.

( _Let me explain how… **leverage** works, Dr. Watson. Mycroft’s pressure point is his brother Sherlock. Sherlock’s pressure point is his best friend John Watson. John Watson’s pressure point is his wife. I own John Watson’s wife, I own Mycroft._)

( _Oh Sherlock, even I can’t help you now._ )

Mycroft shouts for them to not shoot, and John panics, and Sherlock is calm. Shaken. Acclimatized to violence, the way he’d once said of John – _his hands couldn’t have shaken at all._ Nameless faces, faceless names. Poison. Strangulation. Hangings. Gunshots and stabbings and bombs and _leveraged_ suicides. Two years of a battlefield unknown with higher stakes than ever before.

He hadn’t been prepared for it.

He’s prepared for this.

_Not a hero._

_Heroes don’t exist and if they did, I wouldn’t be one of them._

_High-functioning sociopath._

Sherlock knows the consequences before he shoots, the plan kindling at the back of his consciousness. One last offering. One more wedding gift for a marriage he’s ruined and saved in equal measure.

(Ruined with his body and saved with his lies. Ruined with his heart and saved with his old home.)

“Give my love to Mary. Tell her she’s safe now.”

His best friend stares on, murmuring _Christ_ in between curses, numb and confused. Blessedly ignorant. Blessedly unaware.

(He’s already died twice for John. What’s one more attempt between friends?)

* * *

His heart stops for the fifth time on his thirty-fourth birthday, on a plane set for death and on the horizon of an aborted, ill-timed confession.

(Two overdoses, one salt-water tasting CPR, one gunshot to the aortic valve courtesy of Mrs. Watson, and one more overdoes to add to the collection)

His heart is a bit over one pound and beats somewhere around 14,867 times per day. It pumps over 2,000 gallons of blood to nearly 75 trillion cells in his transport. It has four chambers and is walled in three layers; existent in a physical sense rather than an emotional sense as far as most are concerned.

During diastole, panic makes his pulse erratic. Grief and longing and missed opportunities his only companion as he dies.

During systole, his pain spreads with his blood, surging forth through his limbs like goosebumps and numbness as the drugs slow everything down beautifully.

( _But look how you care about John Watson._ )

Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy is a condition of chemical defects and sentiment overcoming the heart’s instinctive need to work and function along with the transport. Only 1-3% experience a fatal heart failure. Less than 200,000 people experience the condition in any form per year.

 _Most_ people don’t die of a broken heart.

Sherlock Holmes is, as always, the exception.

* * *

So fitting his brain arranges itself into another time period. So fitting that it's a forbidden time with sodomy outlawed and Oscar Wilde on trial for the crime of loving a man rather than a woman. So fitting to align the crime of sentiment with the crime of _directed_ sentiment. 

At least his mind palace is clever enough to give John his wife. To have John away from Baker's Street. To avoid any uncomfortable admittance in his dying moments, choking on his delayed overdose in the depths of reverie and a hundred year old mystery.

(But, in truth, his fantasy had begun before that haunting yet comforting cadence. Before his return trip and prolonged existence, assuming the drugs didn't work quick enough. His fantasy began with the same meetings, the same cases, the same _Watson_ before the Fall because the Fall never happens in his heart of hearts. His fantasy begins with soft glances and murmured admirations and romanticized books over a blog. With no girlfriends and just _them_ , quiet and warm and unspoken and more than friends but definable only in the lack of definability. His fantasy gives way to a case when he forces reality back into it, when Mycroft calls and Mary makes her way into his mind so he can prepare. So he can be realistic. Because he's no longer dying, and now he has to face what he'd been more than ready to die saving.)

( _You must have..._ ** _impulses_** )

Sherlock ignores Watson, pretends Mary is always there when she isn't and he knows he's writing her out on purpose. Ignores John's incessant inquiries regarding his _impulses_ and his _flesh and blood_ and _why do you need to be alone?_ and _why are you so determined to be alone?_

( _If you are referring to romantic entanglement, Watson, which I rather fear you are, as I have often explained before, all emotion is abhorrent to me._ )

It's a back and forth game even as he flickers between now and then, between fiction and reality. Watson, ever so tedious in his insistence on _entanglement_ and _admittance._ References to a past that Sherlock's long since locked away distracting him from what matters. From the Work. From Moriarty. From the drugs he'd tried to die with and somehow had not.

( _For God's sake this could **kill** you! You could **die**!_)

( _I would quite like to find every ounce of this stuff in your position and pour it out the window_ )

Too much worry. Too much _care_. It hurts. It's painful. He hates it.

Because Watson stays. Because he calls him John, and Watson isn't surprised, and he says _would you mind_ when Moriarty says the word _elope._ Because he'd tried to make his fantasy a reality and still it deludes him, still the fickleness of reality eludes him.

In his mind palace, Watson stays and Mary disappears no matter what Sherlock tries to force himself to think.

In reality, John goes and Mary stays no matter what Sherlock wishes.

* * *

John Watson kisses him as the clock strikes midnight and his birthday ends and the world goes quiet.

( _I’m not actually gay._ )

Once is curiosity, twice is an experiment, and thrice is a pattern. Or so overdoses go.

( _Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock._ )

His lips are chapped and taste like vanillin; facetiously sweet, heart-breakingly simple. It isn’t a gentle slide in candlelight. It isn’t a measured glide in the relief of survival. It isn’t a mutual embrace. It’s a claiming; rough and possessive. A bruising grip on his waist, knuckles tugging on the silk fabric of his shirt, a knee pressed hard against his groin. His name off those lips in a snarl, and Sherlock helpless before the intoxication of such a thing.

The first break for air is subdued gasping, breathy pants against each other’s lips; John’s eyes wet and furious, Sherlock’s persistently guarded, foreheads touching as they breathe _together_ like they haven’t since the Fall.

John leans in once more, reaching across the cold chasm between them to find that mutual spark. That _dangerous_ chemistry that’s simmered between them ever since a _not my area_ and an _unattached, just like me_ and the Woman and an _I don’t mind_ and a thousand other moments collectively bombarding Sherlock’s walls with maybe’s and what if’s and stupid, _stupid_ hope.

( _I imagine John Watson thinks love’s a mystery to me but the chemistry is incredibly simple and_ very _destructive._ )

John chases his lips, tongue wet and unfamiliar against the sealed seams of their connected lips, and Sherlock lets him explore. Lets him in entirely, lets the shutters on his mind palace and carefully locked sentiment so deeply _disowned_ and _suppressed_ he can almost believe it had never existed in the first place, free. There are no words, no gentle coaxing, no coveted praise or disabusing of potential _deductions_ Sherlock might make about John and John’s sexuality and John’s heart.

Everything about John Watson is dichotomous so this is nothing new. His mercy goes right in hand with his vengeance. His ability to heal with his ability to kill. His empathy with his venom. His love with his hatred.

The second separation Sherlock initiates, mind a spinning mess he can’t control. Deductions unreliable and endless. Observations overwhelming and pointless. His eyes rake over John, taking in the pupil dilation, the mussed-up hair (Sherlock hadn’t meant to be so familiar, to touch and take in turn), the kiss-bruised mouth, the openness and acceptance with that flare of anger under it all.

It’s a mess.

It’s a mistake.

Sherlock Holmes doesn’t make mistakes.

(John Watson has always been his exception)

( _When we first met you told me the disguise is always a self-portrait; how true of you..._ _This is your heart, and you should_ never _let it rule your head. You could’ve chosen any random number and walked out of here with everything you’ve worked for, but you just couldn’t resist it could you?_ )

By the time they reconvene, Sherlock knows kissing John is an overdose and a pattern because his lips take Sherlock’s, pushing him against the slump of the couch, and he doesn’t _stop_ taking. John peels Sherlock’s coat off and throws it to the floor along with any defences he could possibly hope to mount against this. John strips them both and sets them together like aligned puzzle pieces, something shining in his eyes, something Sherlock can’t name. Won’t name.

( _I’ve always assumed love is a dangerous disadvantage. Thank you for the final proof._ )

John’s angry and terrified and in need of something he can’t get from his wife. Something he can’t find in her (perceived) traitorous embrace when she’s still not wholly forgiven, despite all his compassion and love.

( _Whatever it takes_ , _whatever happens. From now on, I swear I will always be there. Always._ )

This is no different than acting as a crutch between cases. No different than acting as a shield and a weapon and backup and a partner. John needs him, and Sherlock has long since resigned himself to being whatever John Watson needs him to be.

Best friend. Ex-flatmate. Best man.

Callused hands from healing and killing alike take him apart. Armor stripped, scars displayed, skin pale and shivering before blue eyed intensity and overdoses and another death-gift wrapped in a Belstaff coat.

( _Everyone has their pressure point_ )

( _Sherlock’s pressure point is his best friend John Watson_ )

John’s clever, angry hands take him apart with every touch, teeth and tongue rendering him numb and his lips bloody. Sherlock doesn’t bother putting himself back together again.

* * *

If kissing John Watson is a pattern, being fucked by him is an addiction.

Not that he needs another one, mind, but addictions don’t really ask permission before taking root. They’re impolite and insidious, and for all Sherlock’s efforts, he’s a slave to them at times. Especially this one.

John avoids him for two weeks after fucking him over their old couch and again in John’s old bedroom. After leaving him with hips bruised with fingerprints and a neck painted red and blue and purple. Sherlock doesn’t reach out, focusing on the case with an unparalled single-mindedness that leaves even his uptight brother impressed. Everyone else, of course, frets and pitters around him carefully, so concerned he’s fragile.

_Poor Sherlock had another overdose. Poor Sherlock had another relapse. Poor Sherlock lost his minder because he faked his death._

But he never reaches for John, not once, because he no longer knows his best friend in those two weeks between curiosity and experiment. Because he doesn’t understand their boundaries, and he doesn’t know if John meant to use him once and pretend it never happened, or to use him once and pretend he’d never existed.

(Sherlock tries to delete it. Sherlock can’t delete it.)

When John does come back, it’s in a flurry of anger. It’s Mary’s Claire de la Lune clinging to his shirt, and her gloss on his lips and that familiar shine in his eyes that hadn’t changed at all during his temporary tenure at 221B Baker Street to care for Sherlock.

He tastes the remnants of that anger in his blood, and he smells Mary between them like a barrier. It isn’t fair to her, he thinks, but it’s not fair to Sherlock either.

When he says John’s name, soft and confused, panting and tired, John tells him to shut up. So he does.

* * *

(When he comes again, a few days later, Sherlock lets him take what he wants without a word. Three times makes a pattern, and infidelity is a pattern Sherlock’s never wanted a part of, but he can’t say no.)

* * *

Rosamund "Rosie" Watson is born on St. Valentine’s Day in the backseat of the Watson family car on the way to the hospital.

Sherlock is with them because Mary had stopped to visit before her water broke, dragging a semi-reluctant John with her, and she holds Sherlock’s hand the whole way there, tightening in pace with her contractions. He lets her, lets her nails dig into his skin hard enough to mark, feels what might be his bones creak under her delivery-driven grip.

She doesn’t know he deserves her anger, her vengeful pain, and if he has his way she never will. She doesn’t know Sherlock had played substitute when John had needed an outlet he could hurt. An outlet that wouldn’t _break_. The sex had been satisfying, but Sherlock knows it had just been that: sex. John hadn’t made love to him; he’d _fucked_ him until they both couldn’t take anymore. He hadn’t asked for permission or forgiveness because he’d known Sherlock wouldn’t say no.

(Sherlock hasn’t said no to John in years)

Mary squeezes his hand until the baby comes and lets him hold the tiny girl while she calms John down.

“Hold your goddaughter,” she says like it’s a given, smiling that blinding smile.

The baby has her blonde curls but lighter, almost white, and blue eyes like a clear summer sky. He decides he loves her in the same instant she cries, a writhing thing in fluids and release that’s so _fragile_ and _tiny_ that he’s been trusted with. Him. Trusted.

He’d tried hating Mary Morstan before she’d turned into Mary Watson and before she’d revealed herself as someone other than Mary, but he’d never been able. She loves John Watson too much for him to hate her. She’s offered him too much for him to hate her.

His goddaughter is the best of Mary and the best of John and he adores her with everything in him, even as he feels the regret curdle like spoiled milk. He shouldn’t have given in, after all. He shouldn’t have bothered when he came back two years too late with lacerations on his back and a new brokenness he'd never meant to explore wired into his brain.

( _I don’t mind,_ John had said. Sherlock should mind by now.)

So he holds their baby, and John doesn’t meet his eyes, and the three of them pretend that everything is fine.

(Nothing is fine, and Sherlock wonders if it ever will be again.)

* * *

“I want you,” John says a few weeks later when Sherlock lets him in. “I want you. I’ve always wanted you.”

 _Leave her then_ , Sherlock wants to say.

 _I hate you_ , Sherlock wants to think.

 _I don’t want you_ , Sherlock wants to feel.

Sherlock does nothing instead. Thinks nothing. Feels nothing. A sounding board for John’s two-years-too-late confession. He wishes John hadn’t tacked on the last bit, wishes he’d had some equivalent to _Sherlock is a girl’s name_. He hates this all and he loves it too and it’s entirely unfair.

John takes a step closer, leaves him pushed against the flat’s door with only an infinitesimal space between them. They aren’t touching, but Sherlock can’t think regardless. They’re too close. John’s _always_ too close now.

“I want you,” he repeats, soft and warm. It breaks Sherlock’s heart more than the hatred. John is beautiful like sunlight, and Sherlock is far _far_ too close. “Can I have you?”

It hurts. He hates this position, hates being under John’s laser-focus, hates being questioned in a way that makes him an accomplice in this affair. He’d just _let_ John before; why can’t John take what he wants without a word? Why can’t he just do what he’s been doing?

 _You have a child_ , Sherlock wants to protest.

 _You have Mary,_ Sherlock wants to think.

 _You don’t have me,_ Sherlock wants to feel.

“Anything, John.” He says instead of anything and everything he should say. “Anything.”

Sherlock wonders if it tastes as bitter as it feels off his tongue.

* * *

The human heart can last up to four hours on ice outside of the body. The human body can survive up to four minutes without a pulse before brain cells begin to die, starved of all necessary nutrients and air.

Sherlock finds it hideously ironic that the part outlasts the whole.

John Watson lives, after all, while Sherlock waits for the emotional equivalent of four minutes to pass.

(He wonders if love is meant to hurt this much)

* * *

“Are you okay?” Molly says in that same soft way she’d said _you look sad when he can’t see you_. She’s in a cable knit sweater that reminds him of that first dinner at Angelo’s and her hands are wrist deep in the gut of an unfortunate 35-year-old male with a penchant for unprotected gay sex his wife hadn’t known about.

Sherlock’s eyes dart away as the deduction eats at him; an uncomfortable parallel.

“ _Fine_ ,” he snaps, returning his focus to the poison samples he’d received from Mycroft. He has each of them in neat slides, categorized by likelihood of being utilized by the criminal class, and he’s only halfway through them. He’s managed to avoid John for the past week, begging off cases with experiments and “best friend” time with “Mary, John, Rosie, and Sherlock” time.

It’s a delicate balance, John’s ignorance. He’s managing decent enough, even as he craves nothing more than vanillin chapped lips and the absence of Claire de la Lune in the air. Even as he wants and aches and yearns for that rough slide of stubble against his throat, for the week long ache in his limbs and heart, for kisses like possession decorating his throat.

He’s too weak to give it up entirely.

He’s too human.

“Sherlock,” she prods, fingertips gentle where they squeeze his shoulder. “You’ve not been the same. I can see it, you know.”

“Still sad and unseen?”

She frowns, and Sherlock avoids her eyes.

“Lonely, I’d say. Depressed, even. John hasn’t been ‘round much either, not with cases or experiments. Did you two fight?”

“That’s by design,” he mutters, wishing fiercely that someone would poison him.

“Are you upset with him?”

Sherlock gives a short laugh, high and sharp and fake. He feels the echo of fingerprint bruises and possessive kisses keenly, and tears prick at him despite everything.

“How could I possibly be upset with him?”

A sigh.

“You’re in love with him.”

“And he has a wife and child and perfect life in the suburbs.” _With me on the side, ever so eager to please._

“You deserve to be happy too,” she whispers.

“Happiness is a series of electrochemical reactions and neurotransmitters set off primarily in the left prefrontal cortex by vague stimuli and a pathetically _masochistic_ need for sentimental codependency.”

The Molly Hooper of old would’ve flinched at the ice in his tone or flushed in embarrassment for being part of the so despised masses of emotion-driven idiots. The Molly Hooper of now fixes him with another look and offers a hug, knowing without words that he needs it.

( _Sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side_ )

It looks like he’s on the losing side, now.

* * *

The only solid elements that assume liquid form at room temperature are bromine and mercury, but you can melt gallium just by holding it.

Sherlock once thought of himself as mercury, a being of constant flux, fluid and malleable as necessary, highly toxic over time. He’s been alone long enough to know the value of flux, and he’s been a chemist long enough to appreciate the beauty of it. He hadn’t the ties to stay consistent, placid, normal.

 _Whatever it takes_ had been used purely in reference to the Work. Alone had protected him, and he hadn’t had the friends to offer him anything else.

With John, he’s gallium. He’s malleable in someone else’s hands, in the heat of their life and the warmth of their body. Responsive to their whims.

Gallium and mercury appear remarkably similar in liquid form, but gallium has more of a varnish to it, a veneer of beauty and value mercury doesn’t offer.

Mercury liquifies independently, and gallium requires another.

Alone, Sherlock Holmes is mercury.

With John, Sherlock Holmes is gallium - pathetically dependent.

* * *

“Brother mine, are you quite sure you know what you’re doing?”

Sherlock raises a brow sardonically, 500 mL beaker filled to the brim with some combination of alcohol he’s long since deleted.

“Don’t I always?”

Mycroft’s lips thin along with his eyes, in a way that has always reminded Sherlock a bit of pufferfish.

“I never wanted this for you,” he confesses, voice for once absent of any edge. “After Redbeard. After university.”

( _Look at them. They all…_ care _so much. Do you ever wonder if there’s something wrong with us?_ )

“’All lives end, all hearts are broken—'”

“’Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock.’ It never has been, and it never will be. I tried to aid you, I had hoped those years away might have reversed your affliction, quelled your fascination with and addiction to him.”

Mycroft bows his head with a sigh, offering Sherlock a cigarette. It’s not low tar.

“Are you quite sure you wish to remain in London? Might it not be _beneficial_ to remove oxytocin from the equation, brother mine.”

Sherlock offers a bitter smile, John’s marks still on his skin like scars from last night and the night before.

“I’m not sure I could even if I wanted to, brother dear. I’ll leave the leg work in Paris to you. Pastries in Paris are sure to cure the post-diet cheer and leave my eyes free of your face for at least a month.”

There’s no bite in the words, and they both know it. Mycroft’s eyes rake over the marks hidden under layers, easily deducing their every location. His smirk is slanted with pity, and Sherlock hates it.

“Indeed. Love is such a vicious motivation, as you’re fond of saying.”

* * *

There are times he wonders if Mary knows, if the sympathy painted on her face is any more real than her name and kindly demeanor. If the tightness of her thinned lips is betrayal or mere irritation.

She and John fight more and more as Rosie approaches six months. Winter winds are traded for Spring rains. Spring flowers are traded for Summer heat, and Summer heat for Fall leaves. John’s at Baker Street as much as he’s not, in and out at all hours and rarely for conversation. Mostly for anger. For glinting eyes and sweaty skin and residual gloss and perfume-soaked clothes.

(He pretends he doesn't know what they're probably fighting about. He also pretends he doesn't know they're fighting in the first place.)

He tags along on cases occasionally, but it’s not the same. There’s an awkward disparity in their previous coexistence ( _codependence_ , part of Sherlock thinks) and their current status which can, at best, be describes as comorbidity. Sherlock has to bite back the venom when he thinks on it too much, has to pretend he doesn’t hate John for what they’ve done to their friendship. Mary notices, of course. She notices the tension and the way Sherlock avoids John now. She gives John the _I’ll talk him 'round_ speech and drops by Baker’s Street with Rosie and smiles while John lingers between them unspoken like the Berlin Wall (an event that had avoided deletion only due to the number of deaths because of it, directly and indirectly). She and Sherlock are friends, more out of a lack of alternative options than any instinctive urge, and they love each other in their own ways, but it’s a strange thing.

They get along well when they avoid certain topics. Things like the scar over his heart and the ring on her finger and the man they both love that’s sleeping with both of them.

She’s always been gracious about her victory, sympathetic about Sherlock’s pain. She’d seen it at her wedding, dancing away with her groom’s arms around her and a sad goodbye in her eyes.

He’s never hated her for being Mrs. Watson, even if he’s starting to hate her bringing the _Mrs. Watson_ thing into every possible conversation, hoping for a reconciliation over a non-existent fight so John can relax, and her suburbia can go back to what it was before Magnussen and the unveiling of lies.

(Sherlock doesn’t know why she still hopes it will if it hasn’t by now. John’s forgiveness is great, but his ability to maintain a grudge is greater. He loves her, but he doesn’t trust her. He’s seen the blood on her hands and her kills in Sherlock’s flatline and he can’t _unsee_ that for all he might wish to. Mary’s intelligent, but John’s her blind spot the way he’s Sherlock’s. She hopes, and for that, she’s stupid. As stupid as him.)

“John misses you,” she says gently, her nails combing through his messy locks and her baby in his lap. “Wouldn’t mind if you dropped ‘round our place a bit more. Rosie would appreciate it too, wouldn’t you darling?”

Rosie gurgles pleasantly, clapping her hands before tugging on his Belstaff and pulling it into her mouth.

When he looks at Mary, she’s smiling.

“See?”

Sherlock avoids her eyes.

“I can pop round next week. I have a few more cases to close and an experiment to finish up.”

Mary rolls her eyes and pulls him into a half-hug. Claire de la Lune assaults his nose immediately, and all he can think is her gloss on John’s lips and her perfume on his skin and Sherlock’s body sliding against his with her existence tense between them.

 _I could’ve had him if you weren’t here_ , he thinks pointlessly, without any venom. _He could have loved me._

He's not so sure that's the truth regardless. Sholto had shown gender had never prevented John's love. It might have just been Sherlock he couldn't love.

“Don’t sound too excited or anything.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t.”

They both laugh, so Rosie giggles too, beautiful and innocent and perfect enough that Sherlock hates himself that extra bit more. Hates himself for letting John wreck this for nothing more than oxytocin and gratification. Nothing more than stress relief.

It can’t go on like this. Not forever. Not even for six more months. It has to end, soon, so John can keep his wife and his baby girl and his hard-fought normalcy and so Sherlock can keep whatever scraps aren’t tattooed with John’s name and stained with his mistakes.

It has to end. Eventually, he has to say no.

(And Sherlock knows it will break him doing it.)

* * *

When anglerfish mate, they meld together. A male latches on to a female and loses his internal organs until they share a bloodstream. Two fused into one. An offering and an acceptance.

Sherlock fuses onto John Watson like a cancerous lump with his heart offered for a potential shared bloodstream.

One heart. Two bloodstreams.

John Watson does not accept because they do not talk. He doesn’t let Sherlock offer. He already has a wife, and he has no need for more than sex from Sherlock when he can’t handle his wife’s past.

( _I’ll burn the_ heart _out of you._

_I have been reliably informed that I don’t have one._

_But we both know that’s not quite true._ )

( _Falling is just like flying except there’s a more permanent destination._ )

Moriarty never needed to specify which _fall_ he had referred to in Sherlock’s mind palace. Falling in love and falling from Bart’s rooftop have the same effect in the end:

Either way, he’s always the one left destroyed.

* * *

Their secret isn't as well-hidden as they like, and so the timer on its inevitable collapse starts.

"You poor dear," Mrs. Hudson murmurs one day, hand over her mouth as she takes his wrecked appearance in. Dirty dressing gown and melancholic violin notes and fingerprints and kisses like scars. "You poor _poor_ dear."

She'd come to bring up his tea and caught John leaving with thinned lips and a pale complexion. The shards still sit in the doorway, Earl Grey with two sugars pooling pathetically on the hard wood amidst the wreckage, but neither of them care enough to clean it up as John announces his exit with a slammed front door.

She fusses with his hair and his gown and the wreck of a kitchen John had fucked him in last night, eyes teary and sympathetic and so _knowing_ it hurts.

Few things don't hurt now. Everything is barbed and wired to set him off.

"You deserve better," she says quietly, restrained anger blazing in her eyes. "Sherlock Holmes, you deserve to be happy. This isn't making you happy."

He shrugs, wishing life was as simple as it had been in Uni; a 7% solution all he'd needed to make the world stand still and make people tolerable.

"Happiness is chemistry and conditioning, Mrs. Hudson. I'm a man of science, not sentiment. A few orgasms don't mean a thing."

"Love isn't something shameful, Sherlock. You can admit you love him, we've all known it for ages."

Sherlock rolls his eyes, adopting his normal blank mask.

"Will saying it aloud change anything?"

"Admitting is the first step, dear."

"First step to what?"

"Moving on."

* * *

Sherlock's always known John loves hearing him play the violin, which is why he now only does it when John is anywhere but Baker's Street. It's too private to share, now. That previous domesticity he'd longed for on foreign shores with blood on his hands and scars carved in his skin. He'd dreamed in notes he'd play for John, composed half dozen pieces in hopes of eventually showing his best friend that he wasn't a machine. That he could love in general and does love John in particular. Of course he's since deleted the compositions. He'd written them and played them until his fingers bled on the eve of that dreaded wedding, and burnt them in the fire when he'd come back with enough cocaine to make it all go away. Every sweet loving note had been stripped and bittersweet, and agony rattling his bones and the chords. By the time they were on the way to their honeymoon, he'd used cocaine to erase every hollow note from his hands and his memory. He hadn't touched the violin for week after that; John & Mary's Waltz haunting in his memory.

Compositions are raw, and bleed his pain all over the messy flat. Mrs. Hudson's burst into tears the last two times she's heard him play, and Lestrade hadn't been entirely dry-eyed when he'd burst in requesting assistance on a triple murder in Soho. It helps him numb the pain with something legal. Helps him dissociate from his emotions and act as a conduit for them rather than a victim of them.

It's just his luck that John walks in while Sherlock's three hours, and four bloody fingers deep into an old composition he'd written after the wedding between injections of chemical relief. Sherlock sways to the notes, shirtless in his dressing gown and old cotton pajama bottoms, and he doesn't notice John until his bow draws the last, grieving note from his violin.

John's eyes are wet, and he's shaking.

"Sherlock, that was _beautiful_." His hand is still shaking as he cups Sherlock's cheek, fingers soft and exploratory along his jaw. "Did you write it?"

Sherlock nods, silent.

John's other hand reaches up to his other cheek, holding Sherlock's face in his hands like Sherlock is his whole world. Sherlock can't look away.

"I love it."

Before Sherlock's brain can catch up with his mouth, a confession slips passed his lips:

"I wrote it about you."

John's lips are soft when they meet his, and Sherlock gasps against him. He doesn't taste her gloss or smell her perfume, and John's breath is absent of alcohol taints. John coaxes every soft sound from his mouth slowly, languidly, abstaining from teeth and pressing open-mouthed kisses against the column of his neck. One heart and two bloodstreams, momentarily branching together in a beautiful embrace.

He feels _adored_ in John's hands and arms. He feels loved.

As John takes him to bed, murmuring affection into his skin and making love to him late into the night, it's almost worse than before. Because John Watson might love him, but he'll always love his family more.

He hadn't known the meaning of the word _crave_ until John had given him some missing piece he'd never had. Sherlock shouldn't covet this softness, should abstain and say no the way he'd promised himself he would, but he can't.

He doesn't know how to.

* * *

(Lestrade tells Sherlock he knows after a bottle of cheap whiskey split between them and the closing of a particularly vicious serial killing spree across London. He lights a cigarette and offers Sherlock one, despite them both having "quit" a few weeks ago. Some things change and some things don't. Their nicotine addiction don't seem to be going away anytime soon.

"I always thought you were going to before your death, honestly." Lestrade says, wrapping him up in a hug. "You two just clicked. Figured I'd be best man at your wedding one day."

Sherlock's drunk enough to accept his placations.

"So did I," he whispers into Lestrade's shoulder. "So did I.")

* * *

Thirty percent of the average person's time is spent daydreaming and contemplating memories. 

Thirty eight point five percent of Sherlock's time is spent daydreaming and organizing memories.

Ninety nine point nine nine percent of his daydreams are John Watson's hands intertwined with his, absent of a wedding ring.

Humans, at their core, are weak and pathetic. And for all things he is, a human is surely one of them.

* * *

John Watson says he loves him on Christmas Eve on a boat dock along the Thalmes.

It reminds him of those stolen six months with a resentful, jaded John in the face of Sherlock's wound and Mary's lack of remorse. He'd wanted John more than anything. He'd wanted his old life and the old John and the old London more than he'd known he could want something. But John had loved Mary and John had been a father-to-be and Sherlock isn't worth losing either of those things, so he'd rescinded Baker Street as an option. Pushed John to Mary and avoided any potential emotion-driven intimacy that might have changed his mind.

The circumstances haven't changed much. He has John's lips and hands and body and heart, but Mary does too. Mary is Mary, and she's the mother of John's child, and she's his wife, and Sherlock is...inconsequential. A temporary dalliance. He looks away from John's too honest eyes, away from his too-sweet words.

"I love you," John repeats, breathless and wet by his side, gasping from the river water and the near drowning.

"You love her," Sherlock says softly. ( _I love you more than words can reasonably explain, dear John._ )

"She's not you," John whispers, sounding hurt. ( _She's better._ )

"That's why you love her."

* * *

They break up the day after Rosie's first birthday when Sherlock asks what they're doing.

Sherlock thinks of Mary's eyes crinkling at him, the way she'd called Rosie his goddaughter before such a thing had been discussed. Sherlock thinks of how bad he is for John, how much like mercury he can be even tamed into gallium in John's careful hands. Sherlock thinks of what John's always wanted and what John deserves and neither of those are him and neither of those should be him. Nothing perfect lasts; the only inevitability is decay.

John says those three words once more, says things like _duty_ and _vows_ and _wife_ and _daughter_ and Sherlock's heart plummets as he'd known it would. Because John loves him and John wants him but John has a life outside him now and Sherlock's life is John.

"What are we doing?" he asks.

"I don't want to let it go," John says. "Can you just...?"

John's eyes are sparkling and his skin is warm and his groin is pressed against the curve of Sherlock's arse, but he knows this can't last and he knows it's already gone on for too long and he knows it's already far, far, far too late for him, so Sherlock says the one thing he hasn't said since before the Fall:

"No."

* * *

The human heart is controlled by the autonomic nervous system subconsciously, triggered by a set of electrical impulses that contract and relax it in cycles.

The human heart, anatomically and physiologically speaking, is ruled by the brain, by a pathway from brain downwards.

The human heart, logically speaking, should not rule one's head. It is not the source of love. It is not the source of destructively sentimental chemistry the way the amygdala is.

The human heart is an overrated, asymmetrical, _loud_ internal organ that beats despite conscious wishes and desires and slows despite desperate pleas and any number of wished upon stars.

The human heart cannot shatter to pieces like Mrs. Hudson's teacup, dripping in two-sugars and Earl Grey. 

His heart is human, and so the transport and its pulse both break to pieces separate and together.

* * *

They pretend.

They pretend nothing has changed, or ever did,

They pretend John and Mary are happy, and always have been.

They pretend Sherlock's chest pains are old age rather than an old bullet wound.

They pretend Sherlock is nothing more than a godfather and best friend.

They pretend there is nothing to pretend.

Sherlock is so tired of pretending.

* * *

Ajay appears in a series of break ins, busts of some Thatcher woman shattered in search of something assumed to be that _dull_ pearl. In reality, it is A.G.R.A. It is the truth John threw into a fireplace and the truth Sherlock refused from Mycroft's dictionary thick files.

Mary runs. 

John and Sherlock follow.

* * *

Mary dies in an aquarium filled with sharks in Sherlock's place. She smiles at him like she's always known about his secrets and like she loves him still. Like she doesn't care that he let John betray his vows and failed to uphold his own. She bleeds and tells them Mary Watson is the only thing she's ever wanted, and she bleeds blood that should be Sherlock's.

Her heart stops. Sherlock's doesn't.

( _You made a **vow**._)

* * *

People have triggers. People who have experienced trauma have multiple triggers. Sherlock's are mostly situational, things like red laser lights and the crack of a whip on concrete. Things like a Serbian accent or the hush of Russian against his skin. His triggers aren't words until they are. Until his world hinges on the fixed axis of one namewordpromise.

Anyone.

Any _one_.

( _Anyone but you._ _Anyone._ )

( _Anyone else_.)

Culverton wants to kill anyone. John wants to be saved by anyone else.

(Sherlock is not anyone, but he'll have to do.)

* * *

John's embrace is almost as painful as his indifference had been. Almost as painful as his hatred had been.

Sherlock can now safely say he's weathered every faucet of John there is to weather, and still this is where they find themselves. 221B Baker's Street. 

The junkie and the adrenaline addict. Best friends and more, broken beyond repair.

( _Go to Hell, Sherlock,_ Mary had asked him. He's been in Hell since he said no when he'd only ever wanted to say yes.)

It is what it is.

* * *

There's a gun in his hand and he's the one that put it there.

( _Emotional context, Sherlock. It destroys you every time._ )

He's tangled beyond repair. Drenched in sentiment. There's a gun in his hand, and if it comes down to John Watson and Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock knows the real solution.

Below the chin, counting down, avoiding everyone's eyes. Thinking of Mary and Molly and all the people he's hurt and all the people he could hurt and all the wrongs he's done.

( _Look what you did to yourself. All those complicated little emotions, I lost count!_ )

It's an easy enough sacrifice. He doesn't think it'll hurt. It might even be a relief.

( _Redbeard_ )

It all goes black, and he thinks of the look on John's face when Sherlock pointed it up rather than out. Complete horror.

* * *

( _We never had a dog._ )

Sherlock breaks.

* * *

When Sherlock breaks, it's like he's in a well and there's no rope. Like he's taken John's place, chained with rising water, alone in the dark, absent of hope, forgotten (if only from his perspective). It's a surge of forgotten things, broken moments, torments and taunts and torture and grief like a beast unstitching the seams of his skin to crawl out and scream.

( _You killed my best friend._ )

When Sherlock breaks, it's internal. Catatonia, almost. He saves John, saves Eurus, saves Mycroft. He does what he's supposed to and what he knows to and nothing but that. Beyond saving and sacrificing, he is mute. Silent. Observing. Processing. Grieving. It's like the ceilings of his mind palace have caved in, like everything he's ever done and felt and said and been needs to be re-evaluated. Reviewed. Recalled. 

It's a dark dark hole, with no light and no Redbeard (because there never _was_ a Redbeard) and with a gaping grief he'd never been able to feel and ghosts he'd never known the touch of inside his memories (because Victor Trevor had shown him the stars and taken them with him when he'd drowned far away from home or help).

He stays silent, and Mycroft's broken eyes watch him with such open concern he almost wishes he could speak. Could reassure him, for a moment. Forego their bitter games for a moment, maybe two. But he can't. He can't speak. He can't think. He can't do anything. He feels trapped in his own transport and it's almost crueler than the things Eurus had once done to him because there _is_ no escape from his mind.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock doesn't look at John. Looking at John hurts. Reminds him of what he'd had and given up. Reminds him of what was never his in the first place. Reminds him of Mary's sympathetic eyes and the way she'd said _your goddaughter._ Everything, everywhere, all the time, hurts too much.

It's more than just the scars on his back, now. It's everything.

"Sherlock?" John's eyes are concerned when they meet his, callused hand that's taken him apart and never picked up the pieces cupping his cheek. "What's wrong?"

Sherlock blinks, eyes prickling, staring at his childhood home and thinking of his dead best friend and the dead stars in a dead sky and how he'd thought he'd be dead by now too. No one prepares you for living through the tribulations of things like this. No one prepares you to survive. Sherlock still doesn't know if he wants to have survived.

John's thumb brushes the first tear off his cheek, leaning ever closer, warm minty breath as comforting as it is anxiety-inducing.

"You don't have to hold it all together, Sherlock. I'm here. I haven't always been, but I'm here now. You can let go."

The first tear turns into a downpour, and Sherlock lets go.

* * *

"I was a shit," John says a week or so later while Rosie's with Mrs. Hudson and he's sitting with Sherlock hoping for words Sherlock can't give him. "I was... _god,_ I was _awful_ to you. Worst sodding friend in the world. I _hurt_ you in every way a man can hurt his... _you_."

 _It's fine_ , Sherlock wants to say. (It's not.)

 _It doesn't matter,_ Sherlock wants to say. (It does.)

 _Two months is better than two years_ , Sherlock thinks. (He'd preferred John's grief to John's hatred, horrible as it sounds.)

"Don't wave this off," John whispers. They're pressed together from hip to knee, sharing a blanket and a popcorn bowl and sometimes a bed (not for sex anymore, just for nightmares). "I never wanted to hurt you. I never _should_ have wanted to hurt you. It was...unforgivable."

Sherlock gives him a look that John correctly interprets as _you're forgiven._

"I shouldn't be." John is shaking, trembling. "I held your heart in my hands and I _crushed_ it. It wasn't fair to you. It wasn't fair at all."

A shrug. _It_ _is what it is_.

"You deserve the world."

A frown. _I've only ever wanted you._

* * *

There's a CD with Mary's handwriting, and they watch it together silently.

It hurts in the way an old scar hurts. He still feels guilty, still thinks it should have been him, but he's accepted it (for the most part) now.

 _My Baker Street Boys,_ she says.

 _What you two could become,_ she says.

John looks to Sherlock for his thoughts and Sherlock can't say a word.

* * *

John and Rosie Watson move back into Baker Street two weeks after Sherlock broke. He doesn't talk with words, still isn't quite able to summon them before the bile of his stomach, but he talks with his hands and his eyes and his violin. He plays for Rosie and dances with her around the living room and loves her more than he'd ever thought possible.

John had apologized about Culverton. About the letter and the new word-trigger and the cold shoulder and the lack of Rosie. Sherlock conveys his forgiveness as well as he's able, flush with happiness at Rosie's every smile and giggle and snort and _noise_. He and John still tiptoe, still ignore, but it's not the colder avoidance they'd had before. Because, as awful as it is to say, Claire de la Lune had long since faded from memory as a boundary line between them. Gloss has not made an appearance on John's frequently licked lips Sherlock still aches for desperately.

He's almost thankful he can't speak. Every time his throat opens in an attempt to voice his thoughts on _something,_ on _anything_ , he's never quite sure what might come out.

Whether he'll say he's loved John longer than he can ever know and died for him at every opportunity just so he could be happy, or he'll say that he hates John for weakening him into this pathetic state of longing and weakness despite _Sherlock_ calling it off.

(Because he's always been a bit of an idiot where John Watson is concerned, and that doesn't appear to be changing any time soon.)

* * *

The production of a phrase incorporates the cooperation of about a hundred muscles from the chest, neck, jaw, tongue and lips. They'd never been sore before, despite all his endless rants and eternal monologues. Despite the speed at which he'd spit deductions and the way he'd smoked his lungs to shite (probably).

All of the muscles involved in the process of producing a phrase ache when he tries to speak.

He no longer knows if it's his body or his mind causing the pain.

* * *

Sherlock says his first word since Eurus on a rainy day absent of Rosie.

She'd been picked up by an over-eager Molly at John's request, because Sherlock's non-verbalness is John's new fixation rather than his relationship with the Woman and his lack of romantic experience. And as much as he usually loves being the center of John's attention, it's different now. Everything carries a different meaning. Everything feels more unstable, less permanent. He never knows how to act or react with John around. He doesn't want to pretend anymore, but he's not sure how to do anything but now.

John's eyes are determined when they sit across from each other before the fireplace, two glass cups and bottle of whiskey in his hands.

"We're getting plastered," he announces, leaving no room for argument. Sherlock shrugs and takes the cup when it's handed to him.

For a moment, John's hands brush against his, but he pulls away before Sherlock gets the chance to savor it fully. Shame.

Three full glasses later and they're both tipsy. Pleasantly tipsy, without the incessant desire to hurl on some dead man's carpet.

( _I don't mind_ , John had said. Sherlock still hates him a bit for being such a bloody _tease_ about everything.)

"Why'd you never say it?" John asks suddenly, startlingly clear despite the way he slumps into the chair, socked feet digging into outside of Sherlock's thigh. "I always said it, but you never...?"

A hundred moments flicker behind his eyes, still simmering with meanings he's hated himself for knowing. Still burning with a flame he's never been able to extinguish, not even when his heart had stopped long enough to be pronounced dead on the operating table.

 _I love you_ in a discarded Semtex and fear forcing his heart into an _allegro._

 _I love you_ in every dinner, lunch, moment, second, breath.

 _I love you_ in his fall and his plans.

 _I love you_ in his scars.

 _I love you_ in his speech, in his acceptance, in his love for Mary, in his love for Rosie.

 _I love you_ in his heart beat; a medical miracle.

 _I love you_ in a point blank shot.

 _I love you_ in every kiss and touch and moment between them where Sherlock could have almost been happy. Could have almost been perfect. 

Sherlock stays silent, even when John grabs his free hand and laces their fingers together. Even when John sets the glass down and moves closer, close as the stag night of so long ago, a hand on a knee and a magnetism neither wants to resist. John looks up at Sherlock through his lashes, eyes dark with want and glimmering with that same unnameable thing from so long ago.

But he can name it, now. He finally knows it. Can accept it like the gift it is.

John looks at Sherlock like he loves him.

"Did you ever...?" John whispers, lips ghosting over Sherlock's, breath cascading over his face but still not touching. Still just the slightest bit apart.

Sherlock's throat opens, and his lips move before he can stop them.

" _Always_ ," fierce and hoarse from disuse, dry and almost painful. "I... _always_."

John's lips slide against his, and Sherlock knows perfection in his touch.

* * *

When two people in love meet each other's eyes, their heart rates synchronize. It probably says something about them that they've always been in sync since meeting...

* * *

The first time Sherlock says it, they'd just kissed for the first time since their break up.

John's face is split with that heart-jerking smile, hair mussed from Sherlock's fingers, and silence seems impossible. More impossible than speech.

(Callused hands took him apart. Soft eyes put him back together.)

"I love you," he says.

"I love you too."

* * *

...because love is what makes a home, and home is where the heart is, and as sentimental as it all is, it is entirely true. His home is in the warmth and constancy of John Watson's love. 

**Author's Note:**

> thoughts? <3


End file.
